Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Nature of Evil
From the Thomistic Philosophy website
First, of course, in describing natural disasters as evil, we have to go back to the entity who created the planetary components that made them possible in the first place: God.Reality of evil
It is a sad fact of the world that it contains many instances – even a superabundance – of evil: injury, disfigurement, disease, disability, natural disasters: hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, fires, drought. In addition, there are man-made evils: injustice, violence, rape, torture, all manner of cruelty, murder, war, genocide. Disturbing examples of all this evil could be recounted indefinitely, to horrifying effect. In the face of all this pain and misery, it is obviously a challenge to believe that there is an all good, all powerful God who has loving care for his creation.
Then we can delve into the man-made rationalizations for why God might have done this. The first and the foremost being His "mysterious ways". All of these terrible, horrific, ghastly catastrophes -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_n ... death_toll -- are somehow a part of a loving, just and merciful God's righteous plan. And what can we mere mortals possibly even begin to grasp about that?
On the other hand, there are those who do in fact think deeply about these "acts of God" and suggest an alternative explanation. That while God is indeed loving, just and merciful, He is not omnipotent. He set into motion all that He created -- including planet Earth -- but it all got out of hand. He is just as appalled by these disasters as we are. But for reasons even He does not understand, it's now "beyond His control".
Though even in regard to the "terrible, horrific, ghastly" events down through the ages that were clearly as a result of human involvement, an omnipotent God could have intervened and prevented them.
Yes, that's the conclusion I have come to myself. But even here it is necessary to first make the assumption that "a God, the God my God" does in fact exist. Which, aside from theodicy, brings into focus these factors:Indeed, the problem of evil is the major challenge to theistic belief in general, and Christian belief in particular. If anything could definitively prove there is no God, evil is the only reality that might. Indeed, what in philosophy is termed the “problem of evil” is just such an argument which purports to prove that the reality of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God.
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
Subjects for other threads.
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=196522